Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @11:16AM
from the don't-spy-drones-hate-competition dept.

DewDude writes: If you thought done registration was bad enough; it just got worse for anyone living in the nation's capital. On Christmas Day (of all days); the FAA put into effect a rule that bans the flying of drones/quadcopters within a 30-mile radius around DC. This more than doubles the initial 15 mile radius no-fly-zone. The ban includes the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, and the independent cities in the vicinity on the Virginia side. On the Maryland side; it includes Montgomery, Prince Georges, Howard, Anne Arundel; and parts of Calvert, Baltimore, and the extreme north-western end of St. Marys Counties in Maryland.

A supermarket drone is less than a pound (half a kilo) and has a ceiling far below cruise for an aircraft. An aircraft on takeoff or approach will be flying pretty slowly. A Canada goose is somewhere in the vicinity of 8 lbs. and will stop a jet-engine, but still won't destroy a jumbo jet.

You might as well worry about flocks of songbirds, which as you may know far outnumber and predate drones.

If they restrict all high-flying drones to licensed drone pilots and low-flying within 5 miles of an airport, within 5 miles of low-flying firefighters or rescue copter/operations, and enforce it vigorously, that basically takes care of all current unreasonable dangers to aircraft from civillians' light drones. I'm more concerned about ISIS being able to modify drones for malicious use.

You know what I find amusing? For a country that enjoys a lot of freedom, American citizens complain a lot of about tyranny and oppression, as if they've lived through it.
The TSA is an agency that has been mismanaged due to a lack of oversight. That is not a definition of tyranny. That's just the american public being suckered into voting for people who aren't interested in representing them. All of the problems that plague the political system in the U.S. -- all of it -- can be resolved if the masses can agree not to be swayed by thirty-second ads.
Whatever form of oppression Americans think they are in, believe you me, is a self-inflicted one, as the power to vote and bring about political change still rests with the voters.
I have lived in a totalitarian country. One of their ways of getting their kicks is killing your relative and billing you for the bullet and time. Perhaps I'll join the melodrama when I start seeing similar occurrences happen in the U.S.

We don't have to live through it. We've seen first hand how well it worked out for all the other countries who went through it over the years. Even had to send troops over to help deal with them. ( See: WWII )

Learning from your own mistakes is expected. Learning from the mistakes of others is what sets folks apart from the average ones.

No, you haven't. You read it on a history book.
The process that led to the rise of the Third Reich could be, in part, attributed to a tired and fearful populace. At the time, they needed someone to tell them where to direct their frustration for the economic downturn following World War I. Hitler was that someone. He gave them a singular entity to fear. And you know what? People bought into the narrative.

Let's assume that in some critical area there are now 1000 people flying dangerous-looking drones. It's impossible to know whether any particular drone is being flown by someone dangerously ignorant or downright malicious

After the regulation becomes well known, maybe 10 people will be flying drones, and it's a much better bet that all those drones are flown by someone ignorant or malicious. Downing drones under the new conditions becomes easier for the police, safer for the general public, and more likely t

So if I owned property within 30 miles, I can't fly my little RC plane or Quadcopter in my backyard?

The FAA apparently feels it is entitled to make any law it wants by decree even though FAA modernization act specifically bans FAA from imposing regulations specifically targeting model aircraft. They obviously don't care they'll do it anyway as much as *WE* allow them to get away with it.

You're mistaken. One of the primary functions of RC aviation, rocketry, etc. clubs is to promote, facilitate, and train safe, responsible operation. The incidents that keep showing up in the news have no affiliation with these clubs.

Birds are not a microscopic minority, though, and civil aviation has managed to live with bird strikes for decades.

I keep seeing this nonsense and I just can't let it keep going on. Birds are living things that, for political and scientific reasons, we cannot simply eliminate as a way of reducing the risk they cause to aviation. We have to live with them because we've decided that they have a right to live. We do take steps to limit the problem when we can.

Drones, OTOH, are not living things, and they do not have a right to live. We can easily ban them from airspace where they pose a threat to other aircraft.

The fact that one threat to something exists and cannot be eliminated does not mean we must put up with all threats, especially ones that can be eliminated. Trying to argue that since birds are a threat we cannot do anything to limit any other kind of threat is just stupid. There are all kinds of hazards in daily life that we cannot prevent, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to mitigate all of them that we can.

The point is that birds are not going away and they dwarf the threat to aircraft posed by drones. If you have a whole system in place which can accommodate birds, that same system can handle drones. Drones as a threat to aviation only exists in the imagination, or in a tiny number on a risk assessment spreadsheet.

The point is that birds are not going away and they dwarf the threat to aircraft posed by drones. If you have a whole system in place which can accommodate birds, that same system can handle drones. Drones as a threat to aviation only exists in the imagination, or in a tiny number on a risk assessment spreadsheet.

We cannot (as yet) teach birds to target aircraft, thus it is unlikely to get multiple bird strikes in a short span of time. It does happen though, and the result is planes landing in the Hudson river. Despite their smaller numbers, drones can be directed to target aircraft. The absolute numbers don't matter.

I'm not saying this ban is justified, merely saying that the almost-not-a-problem of bird strikes does not automatically imply that drones are likewise almost-not-a-problem.

They may obey it because police will assume, with good reason, that anybody violating the ban has a drone full of explosives headed for the Oval Office. The police will respond accordingly, and the violator will be incapable of trying a second time.

The potential for human death caused by turtle-plane collisions is low, much lower than the potential for human death caused by human-drone collisions. Unless perhaps there are airplanes in those regions where turtles fly.

Unless the drone is carrying a malicious payload; hence the no-fly zone.
What they really need to put on them is tamper-resistant measurement instrumentation and logic that will throw an error, and refuse to fully launch, if a "stowaway" is detected, such as an extra device strapped to the drone.

I am imaging some kind of "self test" occurring during launch, and after in the air, before responding to commands, where all instruments are

30 miles from washington national airport covers the southern portion of Baltimore, including the inner harbor, as well as a significant portion of the state of Maryland.

Look at Google maps, the mile key is on the bottom right corner. I used a post-it to mark the distance. It covers the entirety of Anne Arundel County, which includes Annapolis. That is a pretty significant reach.

My liberty has nothing to do with flying or not flying quadcopters at all. That is the problem you're not realizing in your haste to critique Libertarians. You're logic is simple binary and thus incapable of judgement. Or as the good saying goes, only the Sith deal in absolutes.

No, the idea of liberty is fraught with messy dangerous things. If you want to live in a nice peaceful totalitarian state, where everything is mandated, regulated and bubble wraped for your protection, then fine, move to North Korea, where the state protects its people from the evils of Liberty. Because that is what you have advocated.

But lets take a look at what is REALLY happening. It is now, against the law to fly a drone within 30 Miles of DC. That means that I cannot fly my drone, over my backyard (acreage) because you're too fucking scared. Now, I am a criminal for not doing anything other than minding my own business, harming, threatening, or otherwise anyone else.

The real spoiled children are the ones crying for big government to protect them from scary imaginary boogiemen.

So yeah, be riduculously afraid of my quadcopter on my property, and make me a criminal simply because you're too fucking stupid to have any judgements and thus deal in the absolute binary world you're comfortable in.

I am not opposed to government. I actually support a government that has a singular purpose, to protect the liberties of those that cannot protect themselves. This doesn't mean a "nanny state", but rather a government that serves to protect its citizens from tyrants, large and small. There are VERY few crimes that fall into this category.

I'm very much idealist in this regard. The purpose of the government, is the secure the blessings of liberty. Those blessings are being eroded in the name of safety and security all the time, by people who aren't really concerned about either, but rather using those concerns to control the masses.

Think of it this way, the citizens in general, are they afraid of their government or not? Personally, I do not trust the government a single bit. I don't trust those that have eroded liberties for everyone but themselves. I point to the current classic case, Hillary Clinton, who while trying to hide her public service email from everyone, including the public trust (government) is at the same time, wanting to back door Security on everyone's email (encryption) so the government can snoop. The government should not need to trust its citizens, but the citizens should be able to trust the government. Currently we are 100% backwards. And it is all done in the name of security and safety.

Or, take this example from the TSA, who won't let more than 5oz of liquids on a plane. Mind you, they wantonly toss those same "dangerous" larger capacity liquid containers into the same trash, right next to the high density choke point for travelers in airports. Further, the 5oz limit doesn't actually stop the dangerous combination chemical reactions, in a well coordinated terrorist plot. The only conclusion I have is that appearances are more important than reality.

And besides that, between 9-11 hijackings that will never happen again, and Paris Nightclub style attacks, it is much easier to go to high density population zones to mass kill people. Reality is not perception, and perception is not reality. Planes will still explode, rarely, on occasion (Egypt), and terrorists win with every tyrannical move to protect the people.

True liberty depends on eternal vigilance, and too many people want to abdicate their responsibilities as citizens and have someone in the government do their job for them. And I personally consider people like that a threat, more so than all the Jihadis in the world, because they seem so innocent as they give away their liberties.

The FAA has previously stated that they will regulate anything between.5 and 55 kg as a 'hobbyist UAV'. Above 55 kg it's treated as a 'real' aircraft and gets an N number. UAVs get an "FA" number in the registry.* So little toy drones like a Hubsan X4 aren't being regulated but anything much over that, including the wildly popular DJI Phantom series, is being regulated.

And for all of you firmware freaks, DJI has already implemented no fly zones where the craft will not start it's motors if it detects it

If this prevents you from flying in your own backyard, then please do start a lawsuit.
Although, you might be required to actually break their regulation, and get them to put you in jail, and until that happens, the courts will not even hear a case against this abuse.

Unfortunately, the way the legal system in the US works, nobody else can challenge the action of abuse that infringes a different person's fundamental liberties ---- in a perverse tw

Although, you might be required to actually break their regulation, and get them to put you in jail, and until that happens, the courts will not even hear a case against this abuse.

Oh, it's even better than that. There isn't any regulation. The FAA has several ways to make rules about the airspace. They can publish regulations in the Federal Register; this is the hard way. Or they can issue a NOTAM, a Notice to Airmen, containing restrictions in the airspace. This is the easy way. The NOTAM for the DC SFRA is here [faa.gov].

It talks about model aircraft once:"THE FOLLOWING OPERATIONS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED WITHIN THE DC FRZ: [...] MODEL AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS"

Note "DC FRZ". The DC FRZ (Flight Restricted Zone) is a 15-mile radius area centered on Reagan National. The SFRA is a 30-mile radius area centered on the same point. So where's the restriction for the whole SFRA? Well, they've published it on their website, and also in something called AC 91-57A. Thing is, "AC" stands for "Advisory Circular". By definition, it doesn't set any rules; it's advisory.

So it's really tough to challenge the regulation, because _no such regulation exists_. The FAA has told the police to shut down fields, and told the (private) Academy for Model Aeronautics to shut down fields, or else. But they haven't bothered to make an actual regulation to back up their orders.

Special snowflakes are the people demanding government protect them from all the imaginary boogiemen they can dream up. I am asking nobody to protect me from anything other than governments making things illegal, simply because people like you can only make binary choices.

To my understanding there really is all that much in the way of boogie men people are demanding protection from. The biggest demand right now regard protection from--very real--thug law enforcement officers.

My inspected food is laced with E.ColiMy building is falling apart even after Architecture and reviewsMy cars regularly fail spectacularly (see recalls)And roads can be paved by Taxes on fuel (not siphoned off for progressive social programs).

Meanwhile natural foods and Non-GMOs need to be certified, but GMOs and foodlike products don't.You can buy whole raw milk or various other things because they are "too dangerous".In some places, it is illegal to grow your own food (and other "plants").

Great, then just program all of those dangerous birds flying around to obey the same zone.

This whole fucking discussion is predicated on the "fact" that these drones pose a danger. Yet, while we have drones enjoying unprecedented popularity, we do not have any incidences of an aircraft being in any real danger. Even if we did, how many more bird strikes are there each year?

This is yet another example of failure to do a cost-benefit analysis and simply accepting the government's default position of safety over freedom on something. Let's not allow the crippling CYA culture that dominates the public sector to invade our lives. Please?

I don't know what you're droning about, but what people normally buy is not planes, but toy drones, that weigh 2oz, have a ~100m control range, and 3 minutes flight time. That's 99.9% of the drones out there. It doesn't matter where you fly them, the most damage they'll do is to cut up someone's eye if you fly one into someone's face. My biggest worry was about what happens if one gets sucked into the turbine of a small helicopter. A friend who was doing some FOD ingestion testing on these small turbines te

SkyVector [skyvector.com] can help you there, though it's not authoritative.

TFRs (Temporary Flight Restriction areas, though some aren't all that temporary--Disneyland has had one since the 1990s) and SFRs (Special Flight Rules areas) are outlined in red, and while they don't always get sporting events, TFRs due to fires usually do go up.

Thanks for that link, it rams home what I thought, I have to go way north almost out of the county before I can fly anything. Luckily, that's pretty much where I was going to go anyway. I live within the SFR for Lampson Field...

There are a number of ways to look at "no-fly zones", principally NOTOMs. But for a good FREE visual, go to SkyVector. the maps will show all "TFRs" - Temporary Flying Restrictions, as well as permanent flying restrictions.

This has been a widely reported issue that the FAA rules override local laws. In the Boulder, CO area there is designated "open space". It would be a good place to fly because there is lots of space and few people. Boulder says drones are forbidden, FAA says it's ok. Who to believe.

It's more complicated than that. Your murder example doesn't fit here, because while there is no federal law against murder, there is also no federal law saying "states cannot make laws banning murder."

I agree with you that Boulder can ban the operation of drones from within their city limits--what they CANNOT do, is ban the flying of them over the city, because (and your opinion on whether or not this is constitutional may vary) the FAA has the exclusive power to regulate airspace.

I guess the secret to ensuring that your favorite pastime won't be annexed by a bunch of rogue law-makers is to take up a pastime that *they* enjoy.

For example... many, many times more people are injured or die as a result of playing golf than as a result of playing with drones -- yet you *KNOW* that golf will never be banned or restricted in the way that drones are being -- simply because so many lawmakers are also keen golfers.

Remember... politicians and bureaucrats are primarily looking after their own

Yet a tethered craft is still legal.
You can still legally fly a kite (with pretty much any payload you like)
My 'tethered drone' remains legal for use in the National parks, as well. Since upgrading my kite to quad-engine status, it works well even with no wind...As I was reminded by a federal judge, do not forget to hang on to your end of the string...

Wait a second......the main reason I'd like to fly a small quad-copter...is for the EXACT reason of having a tether attached to it; that I fly up...over a tree....then back down to the ground where I disconnect the copter and tie a larger string on the fishing line. Pull that string over...repeat with a rope...and I can get my amateur radio antennas in even higher locations, more accurately, than I can the barbaric way of flinging it over using a sling-shot or air-cannon.

I wonder how long this will hold up once Amazon says they can no longer offer one-hour delivery in DC because the no-fly zone keeps them from operating delivery drones. Even if Amazon gets a regulatory exemption, rich and powerful hobbyists will be pointedly asking what makes Amazon so special.

Drones can be weaponized; hence the ban. Short of turning the metaphorical DC bubble into literal reality, this was entirely expected. I'm extremely annoyed and dismayed that any of you would be surprised. This isn't news except for the clueless morons out there.

Now they can assume any drone is a threat and respond accordingly, and have the legal authority to take it out and arrest its pilot if they can find him.

If you don't understand how easy it is now to build a homemade cruise missile, well, you're probably the kind of stupid person who was shocked, shocked that passenger jets could be turned into weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Psychological projection, also known as blame shifting, is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unpleasant impulses by denying their existence while attributing them to others. According to some research, the projection of one's negative qualities onto others is a common process in everyday life."

I think it is a classic psychological projection in action. The authority in the D.C. feels a guilt for using drones in military combat wi

Actually, the Constitution requires 51 senators for quorum, or else the vote is not valid. Three senators voting unanimously to pass a bill in an empty Congressional meeting wouldn't meet requirements any more than dressing up in full court regalia and decreeing new US laws from your toilet seat would.

Why? A Phantom without a camera can carry plenty of payload to do plenty of damage. Doesn't have to move fast, just get there.

30 miles is outside the range of your off the shelf DJI phantom, but I've got one thats flown 18 miles thats the same size roughly, of course all its payload capacity was consumed with the extra batteries... but its a quad, the least efficient form of flying machine man has ever invented. A fixed wing aircraft has an order of magnitude more distance given the same inputs.

" They require full artificial stability 100% of the time or they won't fly. No human can sense or react quick enough to keep them in the air, "

That's the case with many biological flying critters as well, like swallows and house martins. Greater flight instability leads to higher maneuverability, but at the cost of higher sensitivity to tiny changes in wind conditions and flight surface configuration, which in turn requires constant and rapid readjustment.

Same reason why that modified Silverado Suburban is called Hummer, even though it in no way resembles the HMMWV from which it got its namesake: Hipsters and wannabe veterans like to pretend they own military grade equipment when it is anything but.

It is that simple. The area described matches that of the DC SFR (Special Flight Rules area), which extends 30 nautical miles from the Washington (DCA) VOR (Latitude: 3851'34"N, Longitude: 7702'11"W). As complicated as the FAA can make things, they keep most things as simple as possible.

I realize I lose the argument by starting it this way, but the above is just so clueless, that I feel I have no choice: "You're a fucking idiot."

Congress makes laws. The executive branch makes rules. The executive branch cannot make rules unless they have the delegated power to do so. Congress passed a LAW that said, in essence, that "the FAA's delegated power to make rules does not extend to model aircraft." The FAA made a rule that extended to model aircraft, which it specifically DOES NOT HAVE THE POWER TO DO.

This has nothing to do with "laws being revised to account for future development." It is a department of the government (unelected bureaucrats, no less) ignoring its enabling legislation. This is actually rule by fiat, i.e. dictatorship, and not the democratic process.

The motorcade wouldn't stop or significantly slow down for that. It may change its path, but there are few reasons for a significant change in planned speeds because it could jeopardize the safety of the motorcade (slower targets are easier to hit).